


The Eren-Lump

by pantheralupus



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crack, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Nonbinary Hange Zoë
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pantheralupus/pseuds/pantheralupus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren is having <i>one of those days</i>. He doesn't want to get up. He doesn't want to move. He just wants to curl up in bed and stew in his own misery. </p><p>Luckily Hanji, Armin, and Mikasa are there to (try to) cheer him up. And somehow Levi gets dragged into it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eren-Lump

_Fwump._

Eren flopped face first into his bed.

It was mid-afternoon and the sun was peeking annoyingly through the window, as if reminding him that he had spent the majority of yet another day doing absolutely nothing. The boy brought his arm up to shield his face from the offending sunlight, wondering why he even bothered to get up and get dressed anymore.

For a few moments, he lay there unmoving. The slow rise and fall of his breathing was the only thing that stirred in the stifling air.

Then the titan shifter became more and more conscious of the fact that his feet were boiling in his boots. He kicked at the air, as if hoping his boots would take themselves off.

They didn’t, so he righted himself with a grunt that should’ve been coming from an eighty year old man, and proceeded to tug tiredly at his left boot. After several frustrated sighs and a lot of whacking his leg against the bed frame, Eren’s left foot slid free. The offending article hit the ground with a muted thump.

Eren looked wearily at his other foot, still firmly entrenched in his right boot. He groaned and flopped back onto the bed in defeat.

The boy stared listlessly at the ceiling. There was a titan-shaped stain a little to the left of one of the support beams.

He rolled over and buried his face in his pillow. He hadn’t bothered to take off any of his gear and it was digging into his hip, but he couldn’t summon the energy to get back up.

“Nnnnnnnggguuuuuhhhhh,” he groaned. If he had bothered to articulate himself, he probably would have said something like, “These maneuver gear belts chafe like a bitch but I’m too lazy to take them off. I wish someone would undress me and tell me I’m pretty.”

Okay, perhaps not the last part. One can dream. But I digress.

As I was saying, Eren was making obscene noises into his pillow. He wrapped his arms around the cottony cushion and rolled from side to side with the vague hope that he might smother himself. The bed creaked in protest and buckles of his belts dug ever more persistently into his skin.

He flopped to the left, dangling an arm and a leg over the edge of the bed, almost tumbling over the edge.

He flopped to the right, and groaned in pain when he smacked his head against the bedpost.

He stretched out and retracted his limbs sporadically, like a flailing four-legged octopus.

Eren continued to wiggle around between grunts of pain, trying to find a comfortable position and kicking up his sheets in the process. They twisted around his legs, catching on his thigh straps, effectively pinning his lower half to the mattress. He struggled somewhat halfheartedly against his tangled sheets, floundering like some sort of laundry mermaid before just giving up and resigning himself to becoming one with the bed. The fifteen year old exhaled with the weariness of a thousand wizened hermits, still face down into his pillow.

It was at this moment that Hanji stuck their head through the doorway.

“Eren, I–” they stopped, speechless at the sight of the titan shifter apparently trying to mold himself into the mattress. “…Are you alright?”

Her only response was a disgruntled whine.

Hanji let themselves in, almost tripping over Eren’s discarded boot in the process, and approached the boy’s lethargic form. They tried to pry his pillow away from his face to feel his forehead, but Eren let out a growl and pulled his pillow up to shield his whole head, clamping his arms possessively over it.

“Eren, I just want to help you,” the squad leader prodded. The titan shifter’s only response was curl into a ball facing the opposite direction.

“Would you rather talk to Mikasa? Or Armin?” Hanji tried again.

Eren made a noise like a strangled foghorn.

Hanji took that as a yes.

* * *

 Ten minutes later, Mikasa, Armin, and Hanji were all staring at the Eren-shaped lump on the bed.

“Has this happened before?” Hanji asked.

Armin and Mikasa exchanged a look.

“It hasn’t been this serious before,” Mikasa said at last, looking solemnly at the Eren-lump.

Armin caught Hanji’s questioning glance. “It’s kind of like… a state of inertia,” the blond clarified, “If Eren doesn’t get enough activity, he sort of gains momentum doing nothing until it’s hard for him to stop doing nothing.”

“That’s… interesting,” said the scientist, who didn’t look entirely convinced. “Can you help him get up?”

The Eren-lump emitted a low moan. Armin and Mikasa looked at each other again.

“We’ll try.”

* * *

 “Eren? Are you feeling sick?” The bed creaked as Mikasa gingerly sat down on it.

“Afffnggk.” (I’m fine.)

Mikasa reached out and patted a part that she hoped was Eren’s head. “Are you sure? We can make Mom’s chicken broth for you.”

“Blmghhh.” (Leave me alone.)

* * *

 “Are you wearing your harness under there?” Armin ventured.

“Wdmp.” (Maybe.)

“Eren, you probably reek. Go take a bath.” Armin tugged lightly on the sheets.

There was a sudden violent start, pulling the sheets from Armin’s grasp. “Nnn.” (No.)

The blond sighed. “You’re not going to at least get up and take them off?”

“Nnnnnn.” (Never.)

* * *

 “Aren’t you hot under there? Sasha stole some iced cream and she’ll split it with us if you come out!”

“Nynmdnn.” (Go away.)

* * *

 “Eren, I’m going to cut my hair.”

“Mff...” (Have fun...)

“Like Connie’s.”

“...”

“I’m shaving it all off. Forever.”

“...”

“Armin has a razor right here.”

“Zzzzz…”

“EREN!”

* * *

 “Levi wants you to do the whole squad’s laundry. Right now. He’s storming around with a mop.”

“AHKNGGAHHH -” (He can shove that mop up his - )

“Watch your language!”

“How can you even tell what he’s saying, Mikasa?”

“I read the subtitles.”

“...”

* * *

 “THE TITANS ARE ATTACKING!”

“Mnh.” (Liar.)

* * *

 An hour of prodding and coaxing later, all they had succeeded in doing was causing Eren to sink further into the mattress.

Even Armin was on his last thread of patience. “Do you think we can starve him out?” he sighed.

Mikasa frowned. “He’ll just eat the mushrooms growing out of his head.”

Her hands twitched, as if she were contemplating flipping the bed over and dragging Eren out by force.

Armin placed a hand on Mikasa’s shoulder. “There might be one last hope for him, other than physical force,” he said haltingly.

* * *

 Ten minutes later, Humanity’s Strongest stood before the Eren-lump, wearing his perpetual look of disdain. He eyed Eren’s discarded boot.

“You want me to get the brat out of bed?” Levi raised an eyebrow at the trio.

They nodded.

There was a disgruntled noise from deep within the bed sheets.

Levi drew his blades.

“Waitwaitwait!” Hanji and Mikasa rushed to grab his arms. “We want to keep his limbs intact!”

He looked at them, nonplussed. “They’ll grow back.”

Armin fumbled for a response, looking between the corporal and the Eren-lump. “B-But, uh, you-you’ll–”

“Get blood on the sheets!” Hanji supplied.

“Yeah, that,” said Armin weakly. Mikasa looked vaguely disturbed, but thankfully it seemed to have the desired effect on Levi, who sheathed his blades.

“I have no idea why you called me here, then,” he said.

“We need you,” Hanji poked him in the chest, “to motivate Eren. Give him an order or something.”

“You should’ve called Erwin for that.”

“Just do it!”

Levi sighed. Under the stares of Hanji, Mikasa, and Armin, he sat down heavily at the edge of Eren’s bed. The mound of sheets did not move. The corporal looked down at his lap, considering his next move, then looked back up.

“Oi, Eren.”

The Eren-lump stirred, almost imperceptibly.

A singular note, the low rasp of a cello, hung in the air. Levi began to speak. “Everyday, we’re all faced with the decision to get up and fight, or lay down and pray for a quick end. I can’t tell you which one is the right choice. The difference between your decision and ours is experience. But you don’t have to rely on that. Choose to believe in yourself, or believe in the Survey Corps and me…”

As the background accompaniment began to swell, Armin nudged Hanji. “Hey, haven’t we heard this speech before?”

“Shh, can’t you see the shadows of the past flickering across his eyes?” Hanji whispered.

"Yeah, I can see the shadows of episode 19! I know this is fanfiction but aren't we violating copyright?!"

"No, the author changed some things so it's considered a parody under the Fair Use guidelines."

Armin looked doubtfully at the scene before him. “...Is the music fair use too? Is it even necessary?!” The blond gestured to the group of cellists and trombonists playing frantically in the corner of the room.

Hanji shrugged. “Well, it's not like they can mute us. The readers know what the music sounds like in their head so it helps with the ambiance. Especially since this is the only motivational speech Levi knows -” Hanji suddenly stopped at a venomous glare from Humanity’s Strongest. If looks could decapitate...

Though his eyebrow was still twitching from irritation, Levi continued monologuing to the Eren-lump. “Whether getting up is worth anything in the end, I don’t know... I never have. I can believe in my own abilities, or the choices of companions I trust, but no one ever knows how it will turn out. So choose for yourself whichever decision you’ll regret least.”

His words weighed as heavily in the air as the bags did under his eyes. The music slowly drew to a close. The trombonists took some much needed breaths.

Everybody’s eyes were riveted on the lump atop the bed, awaiting Eren’s decision.

The sheets shifted slightly.

There was a tiny wriggle.

Then Eren’s rumpled visage popped out from under the mound of blankets.

“I’ll choose to get up today,” he croaked.

There were four sighs of relief in the room (plus a couple more from the band).

**Author's Note:**

> Written when I had _one of those days_. 
> 
> I really hope someone out there gets my sense of humour or this is going to be the most embarrassing thing I've ever posted. (Including the LeviHan fic about Hanji taking a shit.)


End file.
